I get this, and in fact wondered if the film would have meant more to me had I seen it at 19 or 20.
I should also mention that waiting this long to see it also produced another strange effect, in which I recognize many of the scenes and dialogue via clips I've seen of the film, spoofs, etc, so that watching it becomes mostly a matter of seeing how the connecting tissue brings it all together. It's...disorienting.
― rhymes with "blondie blast" (cryptosicko), Thursday, 24 March 2016 14:37 (eight years ago) link
I've told this story before--I don't think here. Towards the end of high school, after seeing The Graduate a couple of times on TV, I counted it as my favourite film. It really affected me at the time. My second or last year of university, when I, you know, knew everything, I wrote a very dismissive paper on it explaining everything that was contrived about the film, how clueless it was about what was really happening in terms of the war and everything else going on, etc., etc. The professor--who'd made it clear to us that it was his favourite film--gave me a B+ or something, said he was disappointed I hadn't gotten more out of it, and wrote the comment in a way that basically amounted to a resigned sigh. I was so much older then, etc.
― clemenza, Thursday, 24 March 2016 14:45 (eight years ago) link
elaine is an underwritten character, but ross is fine (in both senses)
― wizzz! (amateurist), Thursday, 24 March 2016 17:17 (eight years ago) link
Oh, totes mega classic:
http://www.allcarcentral.com/Alfa_Romeo/Alfa_Romeo_Graduate_1988_concorso-it_2007_BBB_0368.jpg
... or did you mean the movie?
― leprechaundriac (Ye Mad Puffin), Thursday, 24 March 2016 18:06 (eight years ago) link
Caught the TCM/Fathom Events theatre screening w/friends last night. First time seeing it in about 12 years. Given that distance, and how much I've expanded my film education in that time, the Italian influences are way obvious..lotta La dolce vita, L'eclisse, even some Il sorpasso in the car scenes.
One thing that hasn't changed is "Goddamnit Nichols, could you possibly find some more Simon & Garfunkel songs?" He uses "Scarborough Fair" 4 TIMES (three S & G, one Muzak-y backing track w/flutes) in the space of about ten minutes.
― to fly across the city and find Aerosmith's car (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, 24 April 2017 18:48 (seven years ago) link
This was playing on a first-run multiplex all last week, and I totally intended to catch it but lethargy won out in the end--downtown, parking, etc. Well aware of its flaws, limitations, and benign distortions, but I never get tired of it (or the avalanche of S&G).
― clemenza, Monday, 24 April 2017 19:40 (seven years ago) link
on the novel
http://lithub.com/the-origin-story-of-an-iconic-adaptation-the-graduate/
― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 16 November 2017 15:57 (six years ago) link
The late Buck Henry has a lot to say in that Nichols oral bio i'm reading. He and Mike decided to change Ben's family from Pasadena WASPs to Beverly Hills Jews. (But William Daniels still sounds like a Boston Brahmin via his accent.)
Apparently Nichols wasn't on the bus in the final scene, so it was the DP Sam O'Steen who never said "cut."
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 9 January 2020 21:10 (four years ago) link
I liked their look of regret on that final scene on the bus, that kind of made the movie for me
― Dan S, Sunday, 19 December 2021 01:23 (two years ago) link
I've always loved the final minute or two. There's one shot in there of everyone on the bus staring back at them that's maybe a little obvious, but the procession of emotions Ben and Elaine pass through makes for the perfect ending.
― clemenza, Sunday, 19 December 2021 01:54 (two years ago) link
I always liked this bit of trivia about thathttps://www.dailybulletin.com/2017/12/21/the-graduate-wedding-scene-forever-altar-ed-la-verne-church/
Another happy accident came about during the bus ride sequence, in which Ben and Elaine board, laughing, as passengers stare at him in his sweatshirt and her in her wedding gown.An array of emotions pass over their faces in the wordless sequence: smiles alternating with terror and blankness as the import of what they’ve done sinks in. That wasn’t scripted.Nichols had barked at them they had needed to look happy and that they could only do one take because he had traffic shut down for 20 blocks.And the cameraman on the bus did not know when to cut the scene, so he kept the camera rolling, even as the actors wondered what they should be doing. In the editing room, Nichols realized he had gold, that the sequence — an ambiguous rather than happy ending — was essential to his film’s meaning.
An array of emotions pass over their faces in the wordless sequence: smiles alternating with terror and blankness as the import of what they’ve done sinks in. That wasn’t scripted.
Nichols had barked at them they had needed to look happy and that they could only do one take because he had traffic shut down for 20 blocks.
And the cameraman on the bus did not know when to cut the scene, so he kept the camera rolling, even as the actors wondered what they should be doing. In the editing room, Nichols realized he had gold, that the sequence — an ambiguous rather than happy ending — was essential to his film’s meaning.
― Elvis Telecom, Sunday, 19 December 2021 03:13 (two years ago) link
Almost finished the movie-music Zoomcasts my friend and I have been working through the past 15 months. I put The Graduate up there with Scorpio Rising, Mean Streets, A Hard Day's Night, or anything you can name as shaping the pop-music soundtrack.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d7GjQxsYlM
― clemenza, Wednesday, 15 February 2023 03:15 (one year ago) link